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Batwoman #0 is like a piece of Noritake china--sure the detail is fine and the pattern looks pretty, but in the end a plate is just a plate. Likewise, the artistic talents of J.H. Williams III and Amy Reeder illustrate a story best described as utilitarian or serviceable, creating a symmetrical flourish to the shared pages that's just a little too fancy for the workman-like investigation of Kate/Batwoman by Batman.

There aren't many cases where multiple artists in one single issue comic are welcome, but there are some. To me, this wasn't one of them. Even understanding the Williams' Batwoman/Reeder's Kate split scenes, I found the dual pages' combined compositions to be ugly and overly complicated. If the intent was to emphasize the schism between her superhero and civilian identities, it was almost overly effective as though the two were entirely different people. I didn't like Reeder's panels much at all, but will say the preview art for issue #1 by Williams III looked fantastic. His fight scene panels in this issue were a little overly-busy and confusing, with little insert panels and unnecessary border lines all over the place.

It's a zero issue. It serves to introduce new readers to the character. I tend to check out mentally when the "religion of crime" stuff comes up, and I rolled my eyes at yet another mysterious sarkofagi though, and the detached narrative by Batman gives the reader little true insight into this Kate Kane/Batwoman. There's enough information to introduce me to her, but not enough there to grab me and make me want to read more about her. There's no indication of who her supporting cast in her life is, except for her cousin Flamebird who ties her to a part of the DCU I have no interest in.

Hopefully her larger story will begin in issue #1--Batwoman has a lot of fans here, but there's not enough to this intro to make me one of them.

Can we leave this bullshit behind and just agree that we're all asses? Punchy hates the DC marketing dept. so he won't read this and Fourthy won't enjoy Hellboy as much in three years if he's already read it once before.

Zero wrote:Can we leave this bullshit behind and just agree that we're all asses? Punchy hates the DC marketing dept. so he won't read this and Fourthy won't enjoy Hellboy as much in three years if he's already read it once before.